Category Archives: reflections

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step into the fire – what we don’t know about Burma

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It’s a sunny day in Santa Fe and, while Frank is at a training retreat, I’m contemplating the teachings of the previous week.  It’s all still a mash of concepts and perspectives.  One of the teachers was Merle Lefkoff who taught the Science of Surprise – complex systems and compassion.  One of the points that impressed me was the idea of adaptive systems.  Adaptation is about letting go, it is about becoming open to the unknown.  Of course, we don’t tend to live that way.  And that brings me to the insight of the week: our practice makes us outliers to the norm.  In Lefkoff’s terms we are the scout ants of the colony, reaching out beyond the tried-and-true.

The danger, of course, in being an Outlier is the risk of being shut down, put out, and closed off from the mainstream.  In a word, the risk of humiliation is high and that can be a deep cause for suffering.  Being an outlier means being comfortable with solitude, having deep personal relationships rather than collecting people, seeking truth outside the system with humility and respect.

Lefkoff put us through a number of exercises.  As an aside, I love this quote from my notes: We are attached to each other by the task itself not only the exercise.

One exercise was to imagine what seems impossible at this moment.  What scenario can you devise that does not seem possible in the world at this time?  This was before the tragedy in Japan.  My scenario would have been very different, I think.  Or maybe not.

I described a Burma without oppression.

The second part of the exercise was to take a step back and see what has to happen for the scenario to actualise.

What did you think?  Get rid of the military rulers?  This narrow view opened a deep realization for me.  In any discussion about Burma, the focus is on the current conditions: the oppression by the military.  What we tend to miss are the outliers: the various ethnic groups who have been struggling for recognition since the British invaded Burma and sliced it up into pieces.  I’m particularly familiar with the Karens, having been a loyal supporter of Zoya Phan and her work through the Burma Campaign UK.  Phan’s book Little Daughter is a powerful revelation of the tragedy of bigtory and persecution.  When I met Phan in Ottawa, she became the first person to acknowledge those who stood up against the beginning rule of the military by Ne Win and who spoke out against the duplicity of U Nu.  Scout ants.

We miss the real issue when we rant against the military rulers.  True, they need to be confronted but there is a deeper issue that is too consistently being ignored – the diverse ethnic identity that is Burma.  Not one, not two.  Shan, Kachin, Pau’a, Karen, Padaung, Arakan, Chin, Mon, and more.  We disregard their rights when we speak of saving Burma as if it is a unity.

In the science of emergence, there are initial conditions interacting with rules of the system which in turn interact with relationships.  These interaction result in emergent behaviours presumably ones that result in upaya – skillful actions.  In the case of Burma, the rules have to change.  Our rules.  We need to see beyond our salvationistic tendencies and begin to acknowledge that the initial conditions are not the generals in their constructed cities but include the diversity of the region.  Each ethnic group needs to have a voice for a respectful re-construction.

What does this have to do with practice?  It’s up to you.  The next time someone talks about Burma as if it’s another Afghanistan – speak up.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

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step into the fire – kalyanamitra & constructive social change

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On 2011 March 12, nineteen Chaplaincy candidates in the Upaya Chaplaincy program received jukai as part of the two-year training.  Along with us, three other spiritual friends received the kai and another took novice priest ordination.  This last is significant for being a ceremony in which two women Zen masters ordained a woman.

I suppose all ceremonies are significant for being a moment in which the dharma is pulled further and further into the future.  It is a turning point in which past and future converge for constructive social change.  But how can we hold this delicate vision in an even more delicate and fleeting instant as it occurs?

As Frank and I sat in our favourite restaurant having brunch, he transmitted a powerful dharma from The Moral Imagination by John Paul Lederach.  Lederach explains Elise Boulding’s concept of a moment as being a “two-hundred-year-present.”  This is how it works: remember the hand of the oldest person you held (your grandmother, great-grandfather) and that of the newest member of your family.  Subtract the date of birth of the oldest person from the potential date of the passing of the youngest.  This is your 200-year present.  My “200-year present” spans from 1899 to 2080.  As Lederach writes, it is the moment “made up of the lives that touched (him) and of those (he) will touch.”

A spiritual community must also take this broad scope of time.  We cannot as spiritual friends hold to the narrowed vision of attraction and repulsion in each moment.  As each cohort of practitioners steps into the fire, this 200-year moment becomes the turning point from which our future is born.  As a practice that is based in a heart-to-heart, hand-to-hand connection we are touched by hands that have touched a lineage of teachers; and we, in turn, touch hands that will be touched as teachers.

We cannot be limited by the moment.  Our practice, to be effective in creating change, must encompass and be the compass of all that has gone before and all that is to come.  To ask for and receive the kai is a commitment to “such a view of time (which) must take place within what we touch and know but never be limited to a fleeting moment that passes us by.” (Lederach)

Thankyou for practising,

Genju